


pretty

by Zimtlein



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Insecurity, Post-Season/Series 02, Self-Worth Issues, because Rayla is precious but doesn't realize it, kinda awkward compliments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-03 18:56:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17883407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zimtlein/pseuds/Zimtlein
Summary: Sometimes people call Rayla pretty. It takes a special person for her to believe it, though.





	pretty

“Can I tell you something?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t agree with Callum.”

Rayla lifts her head. Somewhere in the distance she can hear the river’s steady flow. She shivers at the memory of the shaking boat. Her fingers still on the ribbon covering her wrist. The pain is subtle, only a hint of a feeling, and sometimes she can make herself believe that it’s only her imagination. The way the ribbon digs into her skin, the area numb against any kind of touch – it isn’t worrying, she tells herself. Not yet, anyway.

The problem’s cause is looking at her. It’s somehow unnerving to see such a stern look on Ezran’s face.

“What are you talking about?” She starts rubbing over the ribbon. An annoying habit she can’t get rid of.

“You are not a monster. That’s what I mean.”

She winces. Ezran seems a bit unsure, a bit upset. For a moment, she doesn’t know how to react. It’s dumb that she let her feelings show, that she even put them into words. What does it matter? Being called a monster by a human – really, what does it matter? It just shows that she can’t allow herself to forget what this journey is about. Returning the dragon egg. Preventing a war. Redeeming herself. And not trying to make friends who’ll surely turn out to be useless once it’s all over. Just another dead weight she has to carry until then.

In some respects, Runaan was right after all.

“It’s all right, Ezran,” she responds and looks away. “I know what humans think about us.”

“But –” He follows her. The sun is already setting. Callum stayed with Bait and the dragon egg, waiting for them to return with some firewood. She was surprised that Ezran wanted to come with her. He never did before. Now she understands. It still doesn’t make her feel better, but her feelings don’t matter anyway.

“No, it’s not all right,” he continues. “I think auntie would have understood if we had told her.”

“Told her what?”

“That you are a good elf.”

She can’t help it. She turns her head to look at him again. Ezran is ducking his head, clearly unsure on how to put his thoughts into words. Maybe it’s iffy to tantalize such a young kid, but her response leaves her lips before she can control herself. “I’m good? What’s a bad elf, then? What’s the difference?”

“It’s not …” Ezran begins and pauses. Rayla knows that he watches her as she crouches down to gather more wood. She can almost imagine the internal struggle showing in his eyes. “I guess you are not a good elf. You are a good person.”

She doesn’t answer.

“I mean … Because there are good humans. But there are bad humans, too. So any human and any elf … Any person can be good or bad. And you are good.”

“Good.” Her laugh hurts in her throat. “How so?”

“A bad person wouldn’t do … that.” He gestures between them and points to the place Callum is waiting at. “A bad person would have killed us by now. They wouldn’t care about peace.”

“What would they care about then?”

Ezran looks almost caught. “Uhm. Evilness. And evil things.”

She snorts and decides to let it go. Instead she focuses on the branches in front of her. “Your aunt certainly doesn’t think that I’m a … a good person.”

“Yeah. Because she doesn’t know you.” Ezran catches up to her again, crouching down next to her. “We didn’t have to lie to her.”

The anger, the hurt she doesn’t permit herself to acknowledge dwindle a bit. He’s just a kid, but hearing those words – hearing that she isn’t the only one in this world believing that elves and humans share _something_ , even if she can’t quite name it – makes her feel less strange. Less alone.

“Maybe we did have to lie,” she whispers. “Maybe Callum is right. Humans see us as the enemy. It’s only natural to think of us as monsters.”

“But you are not a monster.” Ezran lays his hand on her shoulder. It’s a delicate touch that makes her almost shiver. Something inside her tightens like a knot, but she doesn’t let it show. “You are Rayla.”

She can’t hold back a tiny smile. “Well, you aren’t wrong.”

“Besides, you are way too pretty to be a monster.”

She looks at him, wonders about the honesty in his voice. “Pretty,” she repeats, laughing.

“Yup. And fast, and incredibly agile, and awesome at fighting, and –”

“I get it.” She grins and ruffles his hair. “Thanks, Ezran. You are a good human, too.”

His smile seems so genuine that everything inside her chest warms up.

They take their time collecting firewood. She thinks about the looks the human soldiers sent her. Hateful. Scared. Honestly believing that she was capable of ripping humans apart and slurping their blood like some fairytale monster. Even if Ezran says that she’s pretty, she knows that it isn’t so. Maybe humans think of her as ghostly with her white hair. Maybe humans think of her as an animal with those horns on her head. Maybe humans think that she is as unworthy of trust as Callum does.

It hurts, but she has survived worse.

Her hand starts to hurt as she’s carrying branches back to Callum. It started to swell some nights ago, sometimes more, sometimes less. Sacrificing a hand for a whole kingdom – does that make her _good_? Isn’t it just another sign of selfishness? She cares about Ezran, doesn’t she? Or is it just a strategical move – keeping the princes close to her so the gesture of bringing back the egg can be seen as an act of peace?

Maybe she’s a monster after all.

Ezran looks at her. “Are you okay?”

She can’t answer honestly, so she resorts to not answering at all and shrugs.

“You don’t have to talk to Callum. You were right, he really was a jerk back there.”

She arches her eyebrows. “You shouldn’t call your brother a jerk, should you?”

It’s Ezran turn to shrug. Rayla laughs.

 

On her way to Lujanne, she runs into Soren. She has seen enough of him for today. Always keeping an eye on him, watching his every move and listening to his every word. Once the first lie left his lips, there was no way for her not to watch him intently.

The worst thing about it is that she is no better than him, though. Callum still doesn’t know about his father. It makes her sick and angry and afraid and she wants to punch the stupid grin off Soren’s face as she stops before him.

“What?” she snarls.

“What?” he repeats, quirking an eyebrow.

“You are in my way.”

“Maybe you are in _my_ way.”

“You weren’t even walking.”

“Oh.”

She grunts, ready to push him out of her way. Before she can do so, his words make her freeze.

“So, what are you doing? Stalking me again? Or stalking Callum on his date?”

“On his date,” Rayla repeats before she can stop herself.

Something in Soren’s eyes twinkles. She knows that look. Too bad Soren is the kind of person to let any thought show on his face. Sometimes she thinks he is being extremely honest, no matter the situation. Then she realizes he’s, well, just plain stupid.

“You know, his date. With Claudia.” His grin becomes belittling. She clenches her hand into a fist. “He did tell you about it, right? I bet it’s, like, one of the most important nights in his life.”

She isn’t angry. She really, really isn’t. Grinding her teeth and feeling something sour climb up her throat – it doesn’t have to do anything with Callum’s date. Not at all. He’s allowed to do whatever he wants. She doesn’t care, not in the least.

“I remember how he always looked at her.” Soren looks away in thought, his nose wrinkling. “Trying to impress her and all that. Was kinda gross.”

“I bet,” she grumbles.

“And I mean, she’s my sister. How is it even possible to like my sister in _that_ way?”

She stares blankly.

“Don’t get me wrong, my sister is great. The best. But she’s also really annoying and gets grumpy when I talk to her too early in the morning. Weird, isn’t it? She’s weird.”

Rayla rolls her eyes and takes another step. Soren walks in front of her before she can slip away. He is taller than her. It makes her furious that she has to look upwards to meet his eyes. Nevertheless, she crosses her arms and doesn’t break the eye contact.

“She likes him too, though,” he says.

Rayla takes a breath. Calms down. Tells herself that it isn’t worth it, that it doesn’t matter (because it doesn’t, it doesn’t!). “So?” she responds, calmly, coolly.

Her reaction makes his grin vanish. “So they are gonna, you know.”

“I know … what?”

“You know, get lovey-dovey. That stuff.”

“And?”

“And then –” He furrows his brows. “What are you trying to say, elf?”

“What are _you_ trying to say, human?”

He fidgets before her, his expression suddenly unsure, his brows furrowing even more. “So you don’t like him? I mean, _like_ -like him?”

For a moment, Rayla stills. Searching for the best way to react. Her fingers twitch. Her thoughts are racing, but it doesn’t make sense, because why would she think about it that hard in the first place? The answer is simple and easy and leaves her lips way too quickly.

“There’s no way in hell I’d _like_ -like him. You hear me? No way. No way at all, case closed, thank you.”

He stares at her. She stares back and wants to smack herself. She waits for it, for the few words that could destroy her, analyze her weak spots and aim at them with fatal accuracy. Her shoulders move upwards without her even noticing it.

Then Soren shrugs. “Yeah. Would be no use, after all. I mean, no matter how pretty you are, you’re nothing compared to Claudia.”

Rayla can’t respond for seconds. She feels relieved. And dumb. And somehow angry at Soren and Callum and herself. Her nails dig into her skin. She needs a safe place, somewhere to flee to, so she lets out a snort. “You know you just called me pretty, right?”

Soren blinks slowly. “I did?”

“You …” She sighs and rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Can I go now? I’m not going after Callum, I promise. Why would I?”

“Right. You wouldn’t.” His eyes narrow. “Unless you lied to me.”

“Do you really think I could lie to you?” She bats her eyelashes. “And you wouldn’t notice? Could I pull that off?”

A moment of silence. “Yes?”

“Aw, Soren. You’re so clever.” She takes a sidestep, still facing him and smiling as brightly as possible. “Girls must be all over you!”

Again, his eyes narrow. Then he points an accusing finger at her. “Wait, I get it! You don’t care about Callum because you are into _me_!”

She tries not to make a face. “Woah there, hold on –”

“You just told me you like my brains.” He holds one finger up and adds another one. “You told me you want sword fighting lessons from me.” A third finger joins the other two. “You kept following me the whole day and stared at me all the time.”

“That doesn’t mean –”

“I can understand why. How could someone resist,” he gestured at himself, “this?”

She resists the urge to facepalm. “Soren, I don’t –”

“But seriously, you are an elf. I’m not really into – what, blood-drinking? Or are you – hey, where are you going?”

She doesn’t care what Soren thinks about her. She doesn’t care that he’ll polish his own ego by believing whatever the hell he wants. It just takes some running and a jump up to the nearest tree to escape his voice. She can only take that much stupidity in one day, after all.

His words don’t sting. They don’t. It’s not like she has never seen Callum’s drawings before. It’s not like she doesn’t know how often he has drawn Claudia. Mostly smiling. She has a beautiful smile. Beautiful dark hair and beautiful green eyes. Everything about her screams grace. And Rayla? She’s just a blood-drinking monster, too afraid of rejection to tell her friends the whole truth.

She closes her eyes for a moment and pulls herself together. It’s a lovely night. She only allows herself to wonder about Callum for a few seconds before she continues to search for Lujanne.

 

“Wait, don’t move.”

Rayla freezes at his words. Callum does, too. Their eyes meet. The following silence stretches while she watches him open his mouth, close it again, open it. Zym is sleeping next to the bed, his soft snores barely audible. It is raining. The town is quiet. She shivers and finally manages to utter something.

“I … Are you –”

“Yes, I was. I mean, sorry. Shouldn’t I? I shouldn’t. I didn’t, I just –”

She raises her hand sharply, making Callum fall quiet. The heat in her cheeks is unbearable. In all honesty, it’s not like he’s doing a good job of hiding it. Sometimes he seems to think that she doesn’t notice the way he stares at her, how he only starts sketching again after an absurd amount of time studying her. His looks are piercing. Itching on her skin and making her restless. Usually it helps to ignore it, to watch the rain pour down and listen to the sound of raindrops hitting the window. Not this time. This time, she had to move, had to do something. Had to act like she didn’t notice his eyes on her, all the while ignoring the urge to spring to her feet and hide somewhere, anywhere.

“I didn’t mean to make you nervous,” he mumbles, looking down at the piece of charcoal between his fingers. “Sorry.”

The heat becomes worse. Even her stomach starts to flutter. He saw right through her, didn’t he? She snorts and looks out of the window again. “It’s not you. It’s just – those elves searching for Zym. I’m scared they’ll find us.” She bites the inside of her cheek. “But frankly, yes, you aren’t helping.”

Silence, again. It’s a weird kind of silence. She doesn’t like it. At times they walked next to each other, content with the quietness surrounding them and not daring to utter one word. Maybe it really is the nervousness gnawing at her. When she turns her head to look at Callum, she notices that he hasn’t averted his eyes from her.

“I was trying to relax, too,” he admits, his voice small.

She wonders how he does that. How he can show his weaknesses that easily. How he doesn’t hesitate to speak the truth, no matter how much he reveals about himself. It’s one of the reasons, she realizes, that she is drawn to him. To his honesty, to his authenticity, to the way he’d never do anything to make her mistrust him. She swallows down the knot in her throat and nods at him.

“Show me?”

Her voice sounded soft, a bit foreign even to her own ears. Something inside her rebels. Something inside her makes her hands shake as Callum hesitantly stands up. Zym has moved in his sleep, his snores becoming louder. The sound of raindrops tapping against glass lingers in the air.

He stops next to her. Up this close she can see the hint of pink on his cheeks. She decides to ignore it and looks at the open page he offers her. Unsurprisingly, it’s herself. Her face averted, her elbow resting on her knee, looking somewhat peaceful. She doubts that she is even able to look like that to anyone. Callum’s voice makes her almost wince when he speaks again.

“You don’t like it?”

She doesn’t know what to say. Her nails drag over the closed pages. “Can I, uhm … Can I take a look at your older sketches?”

Callum hesitates. Then she sees him nod from the corner of her eyes. Slowly, he opens the first page for her. She has never seen his sketchbook before – not in that way. Only glimpses of drawings, occasional peeks, but never like that. It feels like invading something incredibly private, and Rayla regrets her request for a long torturous moment.

Then she sees Claudia. Claudia sitting on a bench. Claudia reading a book. Claudia laughing. Claudia, page after page. She almost wants to laugh but holds herself back. When she risks a peek at Callum, all she can see are reddened cheeks and lips that are tightly pressed together. The last bit of amusement leaves her.

Here and there, she sees drawings of Ezran, of Soren, of the king and Callum’s dead mother. They are far and few between. She likes every single one of them, the carefully added details, the talent visible in every line.

Eventually she sees herself again. Her whole posture in the drawing speaks of aloofness, but still – her heart thumps. Callum must have drawn that one shortly after they first met.

She raises a finger to trace the lines. Before she can do so, Callum grabs her hand and stops her.

“Charcoal, Rayla,” he says and releases her hand. “You’re going to smear it.”

“Oh.” She feels dumb. Heat returns to her cheeks. “Right.”

“Plus, I kinda like this drawing.” He smiles down at it. There it is again, a fluttering feeling deep down in her stomach. She can’t look away from the way his eyes shine. “You look pretty.”

It takes some time for the words to register. Rayla stares at him, and when he returns her look, everything inside her starts to burn. She suddenly wants to run away. His eyes widen when realization hits him. His laugh sounds as nervous as she feels.

“In the drawing, I mean,” he adds so quickly that he almost stumbles over the words. She feels the corners of her mouth twitch. His face falls. “No, don’t get me wrong, not _only_ in the drawing – you’re generally pretty. Uh. Objectively speaking.”

“Objectively,” she repeats, because she can’t think of anything else to say.

“Yeah. Uhm.” He moves away ever so slightly. She’s glad. The proximity was starting to get to her. It’s just an instinct, after all – fight or flight. In this case, she only has one option.

“So not a monster after all, huh,” she mumbles and backs away as far as possible, her back hitting the cool window glass. There’s no way for her to meet his eyes again. There’s no way for her to really believe what he is saying. The urge to run away becomes almost overwhelming.

“A monster?”

“Your words.”

He furrows his eyebrows. “I would never … When did I say that?”

“Forget it,” she whispers and moves to stand up. Callum is in her way. It would be easy to push him away, but the thought of touching him makes her fingers shake.

He audibly exhales, and when she dares to look at him again, she sees the realization dawning in his eyes. “You don’t mean – back when we first met? Rayla …” He reaches for her hands. Even though everything inside her screams for her to get away, she doesn’t move. His fingertips feel soft on her skin. She wonders what it would be like to interlock their fingers. If she would even notice the difference, his five fingers pressing against her four. “I didn’t know you back then. Not like I do know. Besides, you were like … like this strong, fierce warrior, and what was I? Just some human who wasn’t good at anything. Seriously, I was scared. I was nothing compared to you.”

She squeezes his hands, searching for the right words, for the right response, and decides to be honest. “You are the most amazing human I’ve ever met.”

He laughs. “Nah.”

When he wants to pull away, she doesn’t let him. Her heart races. It’s so hard – letting her emotions show, letting him know just how much she cares, that she would even let him know about every weakness, every tiny fear she carries in her heart. Her lips start to quiver. She hates it, but it’s Callum looking at her, Callum holding her hands, so it doesn’t matter.

“I mean it,” she whispers, her voice shaky.

From her position, she has to look upwards to meet his eyes. Rayla doesn’t know when exactly something changed. When he started to send her looks that just seemed different, when he started making her cheeks burn up every so often, when he started to mean so much to her that even the thought of losing him made her want to curl up into a ball. It’s scary. She doesn’t dare put it into words, fearing it would shatter any tiny something between them.

Callum looks almost awestruck. She’s rolled her eyes about it before – about the way he seemed flustered about Claudia every time they talked to each other – but now it’s different. She likes it, somehow. It makes her want to hide her face, makes her heart beat faster. It makes her want to hold him close to her, to hear the same fast heartbeat echoing in his chest, it makes her –

It makes her feel pretty.

A sudden sound makes her jump. Footsteps. Rayla lets go of him and turns her head to look out of the window. Elves, a dozen of them. She recognizes some faces from their little encounter in the woods. Shoving all other thoughts aside, she grabs Callum’s arm and gives him a stern look. He nods.

With a tired dragon in their arms, they flee out of the inn and into the starry night.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for all your positive feedback on my other oneshot, really had me in tears!! It inspired me to write something Rayla-centric, so there you go. Hope you liked it!


End file.
